OK, so what is the difference between a terrorist and a reporter in this case? Intent.
A reporter's intent is to expose insecurity, the terrorist intends to take advantage of it.
The hackers in this case may not originally have intended to simply expose insecurity, they may have been just curious. But in the end, they decided to expose the insecurity using the media instead of stealing and using the credit cards for a shopping spree.
Excuse me, but how does unconditional copyright make an author's life easier at the expense of my constitutional rights? Do I have the constitutional right to freely copy anyone's work? Please tell me which constitution you are talking about - it can't be the one that governs this country.
The principle of a copyright is to provide incentive for authors to publish their ideas. This is done by guaranteeing their right to reproduce and, by extension, profit from their own ideas. This promotes the public good by increasing the flow of ideas.
The cheaper it is for authors to obtain copyright, the greater incentive to publish. Unconditional copyright is as cheap as it gets - free! Once you start charging for copyright, you have to set up a system to collect that fee, which leads to other inefficiencies, and you limit the author's financial means to legally defend a copyright.
If you want to start arguing that copyright fees could go toward legal fees for pursuing copyright infringement, you then have to decide whether you think the government would do a better job of managing this system or if authors would be better off with a private free-market solution to defense of copyright.
However, "endless copyrights" and "automatic copyrights" are independent concepts. One can have an automatic copyright which expires 15 years from the date of first publish just the same as one can have an automatic indefinite copyright.
The concept of an "endless copyright" (which effectively already exists - refer to Larry Lessig and others for the argument) is not in the best interest of the public because it allows authors to attempt to collect on one idea for the rest of their lives (and childrens' lives) without ever producing a single new idea. A limited copyright provides continued incentive for creation.
So, an unconditional, limited-term copyright is in the best interest of public good. If an author does not wish his idea to enter the public domain, he should never publish it. Seems pretty obvious once you think about it.
I choose Disney for a real-world example. Disney's heirs have successfully litigated to extend the copyright to protect Mickey Mouse every time the expiration date has come due. You could argue that even Mickey was not originally Disney's creation (see Simpsons satires), but let's assume that it was. Since then, Disney has been repackaging others' works and reselling them as their primary line of business, whilst profiting from the original Mickey "line". They have not profited from a single new idea of their own in 80 years! Contrast with Pixar, a company that creates new material not only in form but in content. Which company do we want to reward? Should we continue to allow Disney to profit from legislation which keeps the company alive with no useful contribution to society? Investors are wising up to Disney's underachieving business plan, why can't we?
That's a very interesting point. I would argue that if we're not already at the stage where a company producing and selling software is beyond the control of individual nation-states, we're not far off.
Software isn't like steel. You can't park the navy outside shipping ports and prevent software from entering or leaving a country.
I'm not saying the 'strategic angle' doesn't exist. Just because a software company can ignore an embargo doesn't mean it necessarily will. Even though it's essentially trivial to smuggle bits, things like software updates, internationalization, tech support, etc. are not trivial in the context of software 'ownership'. A proprietary software company could change its attitude about these for any reason, not just a nationally mandated one.
Personally, I think Andreessen's (mis)use of the inflammatory "anti-American" catch-phrase borders on flamebait when his argument seems to be that proprietary software has more entanglements than open source. I have no evidence either way, but my guess is that Microsoft's bottom line is hurt no more by anti-American sentiment than SAP is hurt by anti-German or Check Point is hurt by anti-Semitism.
I don't think software is immune to tribal and nationalistic prejudice. Just because software is easy to export doesn't mean that foreign markets will necessarily be open in an ideological sense. However, capitalism tends to trump ideology in the large scale, which is why we see McDonalds in China.
My understanding of the voting receipt was not that it has your voting "record" printed on it, but rather has some sort of serial identification number that you can use to later go back to see if your vote had been counted.
So, it doesn't say "I voted for x", it just says "my ballot was number xxxxx". The idea behind the receipt is that it becomes much less appealing for vote-counters to throw away paper ballots since voters now have a way to prove that their vote has or has not been counted.
A passenger who asks questions certainly might raise questions in the minds of airport security. I don't think the grandparent misunderstood the point at all, rather picked up on a subtlety of it.
I'm surprised no one else has said it yet on this thread, but for some of us choosing not to fly also means choosing to find a new job. That hits me where it hurts. There is no other practical option for travelling coast-to-coast, and that's what my business requires.
You may also be aware that several major airlines already have Chapter 11 protection, so in a sense they are already being protected against "consumers" voting with their wallets.
You were right on about writing to our representatives, but unfortunately you were also right on about money talking. In this case I can't see a particular private interest driving this bill, only mindless anti-terrorist "protections", but in most situations you and I have lost our voice in American government to the overwhelming chatter of corporate lobby money.
How do you win an argument when you can't participate?
What? What airport? What do you mean, "everybody's getting a bright green color"? I assume that this was taking place during boarding, so what airline was it? Are you sure it wasn't some other problem with the ticket-checking mechanism, such as the ticket not being scanned correctly?
I think you make a good point about making other passengers very nervous/suspicious, which is never a good thing in close quarters, especially very crowded close quarters. However, I strongly suspect you are misinterpreting what you saw.
Frankly, the way the system is designed with 'yellow' and 'red' classifications, I don't think it's very likely that a passenger will be allowed to get all the way to the gate before the checking kicks in. More likely is that paper and e-tickets will be printed with special codes that flag travelers at security so they will be diverted through to the 'rubber glove treatment' instead of the normal 'green' security check.
Imagine the frustration of still thinking that you will be able to board your flight up until twenty minutes before departure, only to find yourself dragged to the interrogation room for being on the red list. The gate is not likely to be the choke point for this operation.
Please give us some more details about what it is that you saw, if you can remember them from two weeks ago.
So you're the SA (I'm assuming) and you sent a message to your users, but then expected them not to open the attachments? If the people can't trust their SA not to send them viruses, I think we're in bigger trouble than we thought.
I know you were just making a joke, and I realize people's default behavior should not be just to open whatever they get, regardless of who sent it. However, I don't think your test was necessarily very fair.
The phrase should be 'free rein', not 'free reign to do as you please'. Although reign makes almost-sense (as in 'free to rule'), rein is the proper usage (as in 'control of the reins to direct the horse freely').
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so what is the difference between a terrorist and a reporter in this case? Intent.
A reporter's intent is to expose insecurity, the terrorist intends to take advantage of it.
The hackers in this case may not originally have intended to simply expose insecurity, they may have been just curious. But in the end, they decided to expose the insecurity using the media instead of stealing and using the credit cards for a shopping spree.
Excuse me, but how does unconditional copyright make an author's life easier at the expense of my constitutional rights? Do I have the constitutional right to freely copy anyone's work? Please tell me which constitution you are talking about - it can't be the one that governs this country.
The principle of a copyright is to provide incentive for authors to publish their ideas. This is done by guaranteeing their right to reproduce and, by extension, profit from their own ideas. This promotes the public good by increasing the flow of ideas.
The cheaper it is for authors to obtain copyright, the greater incentive to publish. Unconditional copyright is as cheap as it gets - free! Once you start charging for copyright, you have to set up a system to collect that fee, which leads to other inefficiencies, and you limit the author's financial means to legally defend a copyright.
If you want to start arguing that copyright fees could go toward legal fees for pursuing copyright infringement, you then have to decide whether you think the government would do a better job of managing this system or if authors would be better off with a private free-market solution to defense of copyright.
However, "endless copyrights" and "automatic copyrights" are independent concepts. One can have an automatic copyright which expires 15 years from the date of first publish just the same as one can have an automatic indefinite copyright.
The concept of an "endless copyright" (which effectively already exists - refer to Larry Lessig and others for the argument) is not in the best interest of the public because it allows authors to attempt to collect on one idea for the rest of their lives (and childrens' lives) without ever producing a single new idea. A limited copyright provides continued incentive for creation.
So, an unconditional, limited-term copyright is in the best interest of public good. If an author does not wish his idea to enter the public domain, he should never publish it. Seems pretty obvious once you think about it.
I choose Disney for a real-world example. Disney's heirs have successfully litigated to extend the copyright to protect Mickey Mouse every time the expiration date has come due. You could argue that even Mickey was not originally Disney's creation (see Simpsons satires), but let's assume that it was. Since then, Disney has been repackaging others' works and reselling them as their primary line of business, whilst profiting from the original Mickey "line". They have not profited from a single new idea of their own in 80 years! Contrast with Pixar, a company that creates new material not only in form but in content. Which company do we want to reward? Should we continue to allow Disney to profit from legislation which keeps the company alive with no useful contribution to society? Investors are wising up to Disney's underachieving business plan, why can't we?
You want that MCSE, you read the damn books.
Won't the MS holographic copy-protection labels interfere with the holographic cube storage?
Why do these people think that they're the "good guys" when they do this?
I think your question was rhetorical, so I'm not going to answer it. Instead, I will ask another:
Why do people think that reporters are the "good guys" when they attempt to take a gun through airport security to prove how insecure things are?
That's a very interesting point. I would argue that if we're not already at the stage where a company producing and selling software is beyond the control of individual nation-states, we're not far off.
Software isn't like steel. You can't park the navy outside shipping ports and prevent software from entering or leaving a country.
I'm not saying the 'strategic angle' doesn't exist. Just because a software company can ignore an embargo doesn't mean it necessarily will. Even though it's essentially trivial to smuggle bits, things like software updates, internationalization, tech support, etc. are not trivial in the context of software 'ownership'. A proprietary software company could change its attitude about these for any reason, not just a nationally mandated one.
Personally, I think Andreessen's (mis)use of the inflammatory "anti-American" catch-phrase borders on flamebait when his argument seems to be that proprietary software has more entanglements than open source. I have no evidence either way, but my guess is that Microsoft's bottom line is hurt no more by anti-American sentiment than SAP is hurt by anti-German or Check Point is hurt by anti-Semitism.
I don't think software is immune to tribal and nationalistic prejudice. Just because software is easy to export doesn't mean that foreign markets will necessarily be open in an ideological sense. However, capitalism tends to trump ideology in the large scale, which is why we see McDonalds in China.
My understanding of the voting receipt was not that it has your voting "record" printed on it, but rather has some sort of serial identification number that you can use to later go back to see if your vote had been counted.
So, it doesn't say "I voted for x", it just says "my ballot was number xxxxx". The idea behind the receipt is that it becomes much less appealing for vote-counters to throw away paper ballots since voters now have a way to prove that their vote has or has not been counted.
Quiet, you fool! Do you want to be annexed?
A passenger who asks questions certainly might raise questions in the minds of airport security. I don't think the grandparent misunderstood the point at all, rather picked up on a subtlety of it.
I'm surprised no one else has said it yet on this thread, but for some of us choosing not to fly also means choosing to find a new job. That hits me where it hurts. There is no other practical option for travelling coast-to-coast, and that's what my business requires.
You may also be aware that several major airlines already have Chapter 11 protection, so in a sense they are already being protected against "consumers" voting with their wallets.
You were right on about writing to our representatives, but unfortunately you were also right on about money talking. In this case I can't see a particular private interest driving this bill, only mindless anti-terrorist "protections", but in most situations you and I have lost our voice in American government to the overwhelming chatter of corporate lobby money.
How do you win an argument when you can't participate?
What? What airport? What do you mean, "everybody's getting a bright green color"? I assume that this was taking place during boarding, so what airline was it? Are you sure it wasn't some other problem with the ticket-checking mechanism, such as the ticket not being scanned correctly?
I think you make a good point about making other passengers very nervous/suspicious, which is never a good thing in close quarters, especially very crowded close quarters. However, I strongly suspect you are misinterpreting what you saw.
Frankly, the way the system is designed with 'yellow' and 'red' classifications, I don't think it's very likely that a passenger will be allowed to get all the way to the gate before the checking kicks in. More likely is that paper and e-tickets will be printed with special codes that flag travelers at security so they will be diverted through to the 'rubber glove treatment' instead of the normal 'green' security check.
Imagine the frustration of still thinking that you will be able to board your flight up until twenty minutes before departure, only to find yourself dragged to the interrogation room for being on the red list. The gate is not likely to be the choke point for this operation.
Please give us some more details about what it is that you saw, if you can remember them from two weeks ago.
The link to the Bush/Blair Endless Love parody in that article is hilarious! See, sometimes it's good to actually read the article.
I see you got a keyboard with a working 'r' key, too.
Does anyone else think these topics are getting too granular? Why isn't just Games good enough for a topic category anymore?
I prefer a lot of channels so I can skip the trash and find the good shows...
With a lot a channels, all you have is more trash to skip.
Sure they would - it's that big tower under their desk!
:wq!
You did make changes to that document, didn't you?
I think 0xDEADFEED makes a better hex error code for this problem. Too bad PC Load Letter can't be spelled with A-F.
Ah, the 8-Layer OSI (Obfuscated Slander of Idiots) Model.
So you're the SA (I'm assuming) and you sent a message to your users, but then expected them not to open the attachments? If the people can't trust their SA not to send them viruses, I think we're in bigger trouble than we thought.
I know you were just making a joke, and I realize people's default behavior should not be just to open whatever they get, regardless of who sent it. However, I don't think your test was necessarily very fair.
Were any of the sites you got back on Christmas Island?
Teacher says she's tired of trying.
And to make it more obvious who was unimportant, they'd all be wearing red!
The phrase should be 'free rein', not 'free reign to do as you please'. Although reign makes almost-sense (as in 'free to rule'), rein is the proper usage (as in 'control of the reins to direct the horse freely').
That would be one craaaaazy line!
Being first in that line is like getting first post.